Pavel told us, “Many hotels are monitored by the FSB. You can stay here until we find more suitable housing or until you complete your work. There is a shower at the back of the main house. Signs are posted.
“I would like to discuss our arrangements now.”
Jill asked, “Could we have a pot of hot tea and some vodka?”
Pavel went to the farmhouse to get us drinks. As soon as he left, we broke out our gear and swept for bugs and cameras. We found none. Pavel returned with a bottle of vodka, a pot of tea, and three mugs. We drank and began negotiations by candlelight.
He opened. “You are the professionals. How do we do this?”
I told him, “I’ll give you the name of one of your father’s killers and three more when we complete our mission here.”
“What do you want in return?”
“What do you have to offer?”
I wanted to know if Pavel was a player or a talker, but he was cagey. He shifted his gaze between me and Jill. I assumed he was trying to assess whether or not he could trust us. In his shoes, that’s what I’d be doing. I guess we didn’t pass his test.
“I have another idea,” Pavel said. “Tell me what you need. I tell you if I can help.”
“Okay.” I went for overload to see how he would react. “We want the names of the prostitutes who were allegedly in Walldrum’s room at the Moscow Riga-Ritz in 2013, the staff who serviced his suite, and the FSB men who taped Walldrum with the prostitutes. I want a copy of the kompromat tape, maintenance records for Walldrum’s suite the next day, and the hotel bill.”
“That was five years ago.”
“I can count, Pavel. Can you help us or not?”
“It’s possible.”
“Immaculate conception is possible. If you can’t help us, don’t waste our time. I’ll give you one of the names you want and we’ll be on our way.”
Pavel sat back from the table and glared at me. I thought I detected some steel in him I hadn’t seen before.
“What else do you need to complete your investigation?”
“Walldrum’s name has been tied to allegations of money laundering. The Moscow branch of Allgemeine Volksbank has been mentioned. I want the bank’s loan records for the 1990s, the entire decade, in digital form.”
“You want a lot.”
“I can pay well.”
“How much is a man’s life worth?”
“Only the man who does the work can answer that question.”
“In that case, I want two names to begin work.”
“I’ll give you one now and one after we conduct our first usable interview with any person you identify.”
“The name?”
I gave him the name of one of my Russian kidnappers who Sherri’s team had killed outside the London warehouse. We established two-way communications procedures and Pavel departed, promising to return the following evening.
Jill was concerned. “What happens when Pavel discovers that you gave him the name of a dead man?”
“We’ll know that Pavel has good sources. That dead man’s orders to assassinate Bogdanovich and take out those MI6 officers at the warehouse had to come directly from the Kremlin.”
CHAPTER 21
THE NEXT DAY, Jill and I found a farmer headed for Moscow and got a ride into the city. We killed time eating and cruising department stores until rendezvous time with Sherri at Leningradsky train station.
We were in Moscow. You had to assume the opposition was always tailing you or the person you were meeting. That made meetings potentially dangerous. Jill and I worked out a plan to find out if Sherri was being followed. I got to the train station before Jill, bought a coffee, and found a seat that gave me a good view of the meeting point. Sherri was already there with a suitcase, looking expectant and impatient. She saw me but we didn’t acknowledge each other.
Ten minutes later, Jill arrived to meet Sherri. They embraced like long-lost sisters and went off to the cab stand laughing. I stayed with them to the curb, watching their backs. No one was taking their pictures or talking into his lapel. No cars pulled away from the curb to follow them.
I knew their destination: a restaurant Sherri and I had agreed on before we parted in Stockholm. Tony-D would be there providing overwatch for that meeting. I grabbed a cab and took a shortcut to the restaurant. I was seated when Jill and Sherri came to join me at my table. No one followed.
Sherri and I did the kissy-face routine for the benefit of anyone I missed. We ordered our meals and got down to business. I briefed Sherri on our adventures since we parted in Stockholm. She brought us up to date on what she and Tony-D were up to.
“Tony-D and I arrived in Moscow four days ago. Our cover story for the Russians is we’re here for the Moscow Winter Festival. We’re staying at the Blue Hotel in the Arbat district. It has plenty of museums and other public places where we can meet our Omega Group contact without arousing suspicion.”
“You made contact with Omega?”
“Yesterday. I told our contact that we were journalists working undercover on the Ritz story. I asked if Omega could help. He declined. He said all the witnesses are gone and the only staff at the hotel who might have direct knowledge of the incident are FSB. Approaching them would be like asking for a ticket to the interrogation room.”
That tracked with what Sergei told me the previous day. “Okay. Stay away from the Ritz and Omega. Let’s try a different approach. My Moscow source said a hotel staff member was killed after discussing the Ritz incident with a reporter. The reporter was killed, too. Find a way to check the Moscow obituaries since 2013. See if you can find a reporter who died around the same time as a hotel employee. If we can identify the hotel employee, we might be able to locate some coworkers.”
“That sounds like a good start,” agreed Sherri.
There was an awkward silence until I said, “Jill, Sherri and I need a couple of minutes.”
Jill headed for the ladies’ room in a huff, cut out of the info loop again.
I asked Sherri, “What’s the lowdown on Bowen, my employer?”
“William Bowen graduated from a third-tier law school, went to Panama during Noriega’s regime, and opened a practice. He’s been there ever since.”
“If he was there during Noriega’s time, he’s probably a crook. Got a client list?”
“No list. He’s Executive Director of the Global Democracy Initiative—GDI—a Panama-based private foundation. Its mission, as stated on its website, is to support democratic candidates for government around the world. It’s interesting that this foundation was established a week after the news media revealed the existence of the Ironside Dossier, with its allegations about President Walldrum.”
“Why then?”
“Either the allegations really upset some guardians of democracy or …”
“Or what?”
“Or substitute your favorite conspiracy theory.”
“My employment contract isn’t with GDI. It’s with Panama Essential Consultants, LLC. What do you know about that company?”
“Essential Consultants is a subsidiary of GDI.”
“Where does a Panamanian LLC get ten million dollars for one job and how did they find me?”
“My sources say Bowen makes lots of trips to D.C., but not who he visits. He keeps those cards close to his vest. His finances are also a black box. You would have to break some banking laws to get his financials.”
I caught her emphasis on you. “What about Jill?”
“The mysterious Ms. Rucker,” said Sherri, with a snort. “We found plenty of Jill and Jillian Ruckers, but not ours. She doesn’t exist. I had my hacker tap every online phone book and database he could access. He didn’t find a Jill Rucker who matches the profile of our Jill. As a last resort, he reached out to a friend at the IRS and asked if anyone with Jill’s name and age range had filed an income tax form in the past five years. He got a zero. Our Jill isn’t who her driver’s license says she is.”
I ga
ve Sherri directions to our farm in case she needed to contact me or hide out. We agreed on communications procedures as Jill returned from the ladies’ room.
Jill asked, “Finished discussing my future?”
I said, “We were discussing our elusive employer, Mr. Bowen. Sherri’s staff was unable to find him. Any ideas?”
Jill gave Sherri a nasty smile, but spoke to me. “Maybe you should hire a better researcher.”
On that happy note, Sherri left, with Tony-D still watching her back from a distance.
It was approaching rush hour. So, I called Pavel for a ride back to the farm. He arrived thirty minutes later with a battered green van and three sour-looking helpers. The van had three rows of seats. Pavel was driving. One helper rode shotgun beside him. The other two helpers sat on the last row. Pavel got out, opened the sliding door, and ushered Jill and me into the two middle seats. There were no introductions.
This was Moscow. My survival instincts kicked in and I started computing the odds in a fight. They were obviously four-to-two, but higher with two of the four sitting behind us. I was hoping Pavel hadn’t consulted with Uncle Dimitri about this ride.
Pavel announced, “We’re going to meet friends. We need to blindfold you.” With that, the shotgun rider turned and pointed a real sawed-off shotgun at us. The men behind us reached around, relieved us of our guns, and dropped black hoods over our heads.
We drove for ninety minutes to a very quiet place. The Russians pulled us out of the van and shoved us into a building. They took our hoods off and we were standing in a car repair shop. There were two new guys waiting for us, bringing the odds to six-to-two, or if you liked division, three-to-one. The shotgun rider appeared to be the only one armed.
Near the back wall of the shop, I saw a table accommodating a group that looked ominously like a tribunal. There was one woman in her late twenties or early thirties and four men, ranging from the thirties to late middle age. I recalculated the odds in the room as too-many-to-futile.
On the wall behind this group there was a Russian Federation flag with a black-and-white military-like patch sewn to its center. The patch contained an eagle claw holding a globe with an arrow embedded in it. The banner underneath contained one word: Omega.
Pavel pointed to the table. “Sit.”
We sat. The muscle from the van joined us on either side, except the shotgun rider. He had traded his shotgun for our pistols and stood a safe distance behind me and Jill.
The studious-looking younger man in a heavy sweater brushed dark hair away from one eye and peered at us across the table. “We represent Omega. Have you heard of us?”
“A Russian friend gave me the name of your group. He said you might help me connect Walldrum to the Ironside allegations.”
“What’s your Russian friend’s name?”
“It doesn’t matter. We talked in London. Not long after, he was sent back to Moscow and executed. I wouldn’t reveal his name any more than I would yours.”
“If he’s dead, there’s no reason for you to withhold his name.”
I agreed, but these people were patriotic conspirators. They, like the mafia, hated informers.
There was a woman across the table, a redhead with piercing green eyes. She leaned toward me and said in a harsh voice, “Understand this, the only reason you’re still alive is that we believe you can help our cause by disrupting certain Kremlin plans that have come to our attention. We need to know that we can trust you. You need to trust us. Give us the name.”
“Boris Kulik. He worked at the Russian Embassy in London.”
They all turned to a tough-looking fellow. He announced to the group, “Boris Kulik was executed at Lubyanka Prison two weeks ago.” To me, he said, “Pavel tells us you have in your possession FSB credentials. Explain, please.”
“They’re forgeries, part of my plan to get out of Russia when I finish my work.”
He gave me nothing in return. My guess? He was some kind of cop, there to assess our trustworthiness.
Jill spoke for the first time. “Tell us about Omega.”
The redhead responded with fire in her eyes. “Omega is a group of patriots dedicated to taking back Mother Russia’s wealth from the apparatchiks, the oligarchs, and the mafia, and bringing them to justice. We have Omega members at every level and sector of society, government, banking—even in the security services and the mafia.”
She pointed to the wall. “This is our flag, the Omega flag—the claw, globe, and arrow, superimposed on the flag of the Russian Federation. The arrow signifies pursuit—pursuit of the thieves who have stolen Mother Russia’s wealth. The globe shows that they have hidden that stolen wealth around the world and we will follow it to those hiding places. The claw symbolizes our global reach and our intention to claw back that wealth, return it to Russia, and punish the thieves.”
Apparently, she was the group ideologue and probably designed the flag.
Jill pressed her. “Why do you call yourselves the Omega Group?”
“Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. For us, it signifies the time when the pillage of Mother Russia’s resources ends. When that time comes, the corrupt political system will crumble and the thieves will flee to the ends of the earth to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. We will pursue them. We will find them. We will take back what belongs to Mother Russia. We will destroy them and any who benefited from their thievery—the families, the bankers, the politicians, the mafia—all of them.”
She looked at me, her eyes burning with patriotic intensity. “Which brings us to you. You want to follow the money, like your special prosecutor.”
“That always works,” I told her. “I want to see the Allgemeine Volksbank records of all oligarch wealth management funds, and the money transfers in and out of those funds. Can you help me?”
“That is not possible. Those records are inaccessible.”
“What does inaccessible mean to you?”
“Since the world press has drawn attention to those records, they have been taken offline. They are now managed in stand-alone computers in a secure room at the bank. Therefore, they are not susceptible to hacking and any attempt to copy them would alert the cybersecurity staff. That is what inaccessible means to me.”
Pavel spoke soothingly to me. “We understand that you want to document the precise origins of the money to follow its trail. Records are useful, but we know the money is being stolen and who is stealing it. Omega’s first priority is to understand the systems for laundering Russian money. Then, we identify the destinations. When the time comes, we will get it back.”
He added, “If you understand how the money is moved, I think you will then know what specific records you need in order to follow the money to Walldrum and on to its ultimate destinations. If you are interested in how, we can help you.”
I wasn’t very interested. I wanted the damned wealth fund records, but I didn’t want to offend our hosts, especially the shotgun rider standing behind us with my gun. Nor did I want Pavel—the apparent organizer of this little gathering—to lose face. After all, he had saved us from Uncle Dimitri’s final solution. I announced, “We’re all ears.”
“Good.” Pavel gave me a little smile of appreciation. “There are many illegal operations and simultaneous activities. A great deal of wealth is laundered through real estate transactions in foreign countries. To understand that aspect of the laundering process, we examined one real estate project in detail. With the information we uncovered”—he looked at me—“some of it hearsay, we developed what we think is one of the money laundering protocols. I will use Walldrum Tower in Panama as an example, because it is the project about which we have the most information … and the best guesses.
“Assume that oligarchs steal a billion dollars. They deposit the money into a wealth management account at their favorite Moscow bank—Allgemeine Volksbank, AVB. Next, they need to get the money out of Russia. They can’t wire it to another country without triggering alarms throughou
t the banking system. The authorities—bank regulators and tax people—will ask where did this money come from? To whom does it belong? How did the owner earn it? What is the purpose for sending it here? The thieves don’t want those questions asked. Also, if they are under sanctions, the money or any assets purchased with it might be seized. So, the money must be laundered in such a way that it can’t be traced to the source—the oligarch funds.
“To achieve this, the oligarchs conspire with a legitimate-looking real estate developer in the States—like Ted Walldrum—to move money. The developer applies to the bank—AVB—for a loan. Both the oligarchs and the bank want to keep the source of funds secret. So, the bank transfers the money out of the oligarch’s account and merges it with the bank’s pool of cash available for loans. They loan the developer four hundred million dollars to build a high-rise condo hotel in Panama. The developer builds the high-rise and furnishes it in lavish style, but at a cost of just three hundred million dollars. On paper, it costs four hundred million because a quarter of his expenses are supported by bogus invoices for materials and services never delivered.”
The redhead interrupted him. “There is a unit here in Moscow that prepares phony invoices for each real estate project. If there is ever an audit of the expenses, there will be a paper trail and no apparent irregularities.”
I asked Pavel, “What happens to the money the developer didn’t spend?”
“He transfers it to a real estate development fund. Usually, the fund is in a third country where banking secrecy is tight and banking morals are loose. No one questions this transfer because real estate development requires lots of cash. Once the money is in Country 3, it’s moved through a series of corporations, with hard-to-trace ownership, until it ends up in an LLC controlled by the oligarchs who funded the original loan. Then, front men for the oligarchs use that hundred million to buy condos from the developer in the Panama high-rise.
The President’s Dossier Page 15